Delivered by Ingenta IP : 94.67.166.95 On: Thu, 17 Oct 2019 07:25:18 Copyright The Policy Press ‘This is a cage for migrants’ only as a way to evict a population that was visible in the area but also as a dissuasive mechanism. It is important to consider the more general framework in which the practices described above were taking place and how they evolved until recently. In December 2008, a teenage high-school student was shot dead in cold blood by a police special guard in central Athens, sparking weeks of civil unrest across the country (see Vradis Dalakoglou, 2011).At the same time, the underlying crisis began to unfold on multiple levels while the state and media narrative intensified the identification of social unrest with lawlessness and blind violence.The focus was put on certain urban districts that began to be portrayed as ‘ghettos’. In a cynical way, one could say that the crisis was approached by the state as ‘a problematic situation in the city’ (Aftodioikisi, 2011). Athens’ municipal council backed proposals calling for more police surveillance and plans for the gentrification of city-centre districts. Government and the media stigmatised migrants, qualifying them as a health bomb in the city centre of Athens (Filippidis, 2013).The authorities carried out raids, which were treated as a spectacle by the media. The-then Health Minister, Andreas Loverdos, initiated what was described as a witch hunt against seropositive mainly Greek sex workers in downtown Athens, forcibly arresting, testing, detaining and prosecuting women. It was a highly publicised sweep operation that was accompanied by the publication in the media of the photos and personal details of the arrested seropositive women (http://tinyurl.com/ke9xj3p, in Greek).5 The Health Minister did not stop with the hunting operations and declarations; he proceeded to sign a health regulation in which health status was introduced as a grounds for the detention of migrants and asylum seekers. Along the same logic, some months later, the future Prime Minister, Antonis Samaras, stated at a pre-election rally: ‘We shall reoccupy our cities and our neighborhoods…. And the feeling of security shall be reinstated among their residents’ (Filippidis, 2013). In August 2012, Nikos Dendias, Minister of Public Order and Citizen Protection, proceeded with another police operation codenamed ‘Xenios Dias’ (Hospitable Zeus), a cynical label to describe police raids all over Greece.The EU’s new and unprecedented ‘Mos Maiorum’ police operation could be seen as the European extension of these sweep operations: from 13 to 26 October 2014, a joint operation coordinated by Italy and with the cooperation of Frontex aimed at apprehending ‘irregular’ migrants in the Schengen6 area. The objective was to gather information such as personal data and the routes people use in order to reach Europe (see Brenner, 2014). The emergence of racism and neo-Nazism The framework outlined above needs to be viewed against the background of the far-right parties and groups active in Greece (see Georgiadou, 2008). Although these groups have been present for a number of decades, the situation changed when the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party began gaining ground from older far-right parties and entered the Greek Parliament in 2012 after receiving 7% of the national vote. Party Members of Parliament (MPs) and party members have been implicated in several attacks. While xenophobic incidents and racist manifestations are not recent phenomena (see Pavlou, 2007), what is new are the ways in which and the regularity with which forms of rejection are taking place.These are mainly directed against migrants.What 191